OVERconnected
The Promise and Threat of the Internet
By: William H. Davidow
Published: January 4, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
ISBN-10: 1883285461
ISBN-13: 978-1883285463
Publisher: Delphinium Books
"By 2007, the Internet had become so much a part of our way of life that we were no longer conscious of the ways it was affecting us", writes former Silicon Valley executive and successful entrepreneur William H. Davidow, in his thought provoking and insightful book OVERconnected: The Promise and Threat of the Internet. The author describes how the very ubiquitous nature of the Internet masks a myriad of dangers to both individuals and to society; along as providing its many benefits.
William Davidow recognizes the success of the Internet in creating connections that work toward making the world a much smaller place. The World Wide Web has made business and communications more efficient, effective, and wider reaching than ever before in history. The range and depth of the Internet connects people and business on a global scale that is unprecedented in the course of human endeavor. At the same time, William Davidow points to another potentially societal damaging side to the Internet. Paradoxically, the connections created and enabled through the Web can also become too deep and too wide in scope. The same effects that transformed the Internet into a link between people and organizations also sow the seeds of potentially devastating consequences.
William H. Davidow (photo left) deconstructs the form of the Internet as containing both strong and weak connections. Through the effective use of systems theory, the author presents the case that the massive web of connections creates excessive amounts of positive feedback. The result of this ever growing feedback loop is increasing levels of instability within the system at both the macro and micro levels. With so much additional instability, the entire system becomes prone to accidents and growing amounts of volatility. Using historical and modern examples of systems feedback, William Davidow demonstrates how the increases in volatility accelerates system breakdown. While the Internet connectedness didn't cause the 2008 financial crisis, or cause the financial default in Iceland, the system did contribute the often overlooked aspects of speed and continual feedback. This positive feedback and information exchange efficiency can work rapidly to create more economic activity, but also works to leverage the damage to ever higher levels in a downturn.
For me, the power of the book is how William Davidow provides a powerful and passionate description of the Internet as positively reinforcing system, based on feedback and information efficiency. The author presents a balanced view of both the benefits and the inherent dangers of the modern connected world. As a pioneer of the Internet and its technology, William Davidow shares a perspective that understands how the system operates from the inside. Along with this systems knowledge is a deeper insight into the many ways that even the most seemingly successful systems. In the case of the Internet, its very success increases its vulnerability to systems failure. Along with this rich and rewarding theoretical background, the author offers some practical ideas to reduce the overall risk to the Internet as a system.
William Davidow points to the dangers to privacy of being connected in so many places simultaneously, and in real time. This loss of privacy is not only dangerous to the individual, but also presents another touch point of volatility to the system through efficient information exchange. When problems arise in the Internet, the entire system reproduces those issues, and magnifies their potential for disaster. In the case of the financial crisis, the efficient information exchange created feedback that multiplied the contagion of collapse. To prevent this problem recurring, the author offers some practical and common sense solutions. The author also bolsters his recommendations through placing the Internet system within a solid historical context. The examples given, ranging from the 1720 South Seas Bubble to the Iceland financial failure, show how the aspect of positive feedback loops increase system volatility, ending in collapse. Being overconnected through the Internet is the latest, and the most complete, feedback system in history.
I highly recommend the landmark and groundbreaking book OVERconnected: The Promise and Threat of the Internet by William H. Davidow, to anyone serious about understanding how the Internet operates as a volatile feedback system. The author provides an excellent dissection of the Internet from the inside out, and shares some very workable strategies to reduce the danger presented by being overconnected at the personal, organizational, and global levels.
Read the seminal and essential book OVERconnected: The Promise and Threat of the Internet by William H. Davidow, and learn how the Internet really works. The findings and conclusions will both surprise and shock you. The author points the way to utilizing the overall advantages of the Internet to modern society, while offering techniques to reduce the overall systemic, as well as the personal risk.
